Apr 21, 2022
Adam Rosen on Catapulting Commissions Sales Talk
This week on Catapulting Commissions Sales Talk Anthony welcomes Adam Rosen. Adam is an entrepreneur that loves to support business owners and share his rollercoaster startup journey to help those on a similar path. As a founder of a tech startup, Adam spent 5 years leading a college recruiting startup that was acquired in 2019 by a leading college marketing firm. His primary focus now is on helping startups get more sales appointments, hassle-free, through his lead generation business, Email Outreach Company.
As a cofounder of Email Outreach Company (EOC) and serial entrepreneur, Adam knows a lot about successful prospecting. He never really held a true 9 to 5 job. After getting his MBA, he started his first tech startup business. It was acquired after 5 years, but that doesn’t mean he retired to a beach house before 30. He immediately got back to work, and he now advises many startups through EOC. Though he has worked in tech startups, he really thinks of himself as a sales entrepreneur.
What kind of companies should do email outreach?
Adam’s company EOC can make a big impact for nearly any B2B company. He launched the business because at the end of the day almost every company needs more sales appointments. The problem is that most sales development reps hate cold email outreach. That’s because generating solid, qualified leads through email is hard. Its challenging nature means lots of people think email outreach doesn’t work. Adam says that’s just not true. People think it doesn’t work because they don’t know how to do it well. Email outreach can work for literally any B2B business when it’s done right.
The basics of good email outreach require you to keep details to a minimum because too many details confuse a prospect. A confused buyer is not a buyer at all.
- Keep it simple. Make it easy to read and keep it short– 4-6 sentences tops. Show you care and respect the prospect by getting right to the point. Here’s the problem. Here’s how we solve it. Here’s our social proof.
- Follow up. For EOC’s clients, on average it takes 4 emails to set up one successful meeting. If you don’t follow up, you aren’t even going to get a chance to close. Follow up has to be systemized and automatic.
- Stay out of SPAM folders. Don’t make the email too long, complicated, or link-filled. Emails should be all plain text. Lots of links, photos, and videos get caught in the SPAM filter.
Common founder mistakes
The biggest mistake Adam sees is that a brand never finds its true product market fit. When you have a true product market fit, you go beyond just getting that first sale. It’s about creating a product that customers want to keep buying from you over and over again. You have to make sure that every single customer is happy, renewing, and giving you more money because you’re providing more value all the time. In Adam’s experience, there are two types of founders. There are product-focused founders and sales-focused founders. Product-focused founders can get that product market fit dialed in quickly, but they might not be great at the sales side of things. The opposite is true of the sales-focused founders– great at sales, unclear on the product market fit. Ideally, you need both of those minds working at once.
As we’ve heard on the Catapulting Commissions podcast before, a founder should create systems that somebody else can plug into and replicate– for every aspect of the business. That said, you can’t be too rigid. Allow for humanity and flexibility with the systems you create. Find a way to let players be their most authentic self while having systems in place that anyone can operate. It’s about hiring the right people to fit in the system in a way that allows them to shine.
Hire good talent
When you are making your initial hires in a startup, it’s good to have a mix of the “green,” hungry types and the tenured, experienced types. Some roles really call for that hungry hire. Others really demand a tenured hire. Overall, there are three things Adam looks for when hiring for startups:
- Hire people you can trust. Things will get difficult and mistakes will be made in a startup environment. Can you trust your people to be honest with you? They have to be able to learn from their mistakes and be willing to grow with you.
- Hire people with hunger and grit. In sales and startups, you have to be willing to take a punch in the face and get right back in the ring.
- Hire people who are coachable. Your people need to be open to being told what they don’t know and then willing to accept coaching to fill in those knowledge gaps.